| The ten Gold Souks will come up over an area of between one lakh and three lakh square feet in various regions. |
| The malls will be operational by December 2008. Each mall will have 70 to 100 showrooms that sell domestic as well as international brands. |
| G S Pillai, president, Aerens Gold Souk International Ltd (AGSIL), in Ahmedabad said the company intended to be the future of Indian jewellery retailing with customers being able to purchase gold and diamond jewellery from renowned retailers from India and the world at a single place. |
| Over the next five years, AGSIL will invest over Rs 350 crore only in constructing the malls, the official said. |
| He said the land cost varies from city to city, and this has not been included in the cost. |
| The shops that will be constructed inside the malls will either be sold or rented out, Pillai said. |
| Beginning with Gurgaon, where the Gold Souk mall has already been constructed and will be formally inaugurated in October this year, the company will construct huge jewellery malls in Ludhiana, Jaipur, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Kochi and Kolkata. |
| "We have already finalised the location in two or three places and will start constructing the jewellery malls as soon as the formalities are completed," Pillai said. |
| According to the official, it takes around six months to finalise the purchase of land, 18 months for the construction and six months for the jewellers to complete work on interiors. |
| The first Gold Souk, spread over 1.80 lakh square feet area in Gurgaon, has been complete and shops in the mall will be handed over to jewellers from April, after which it will be formally inaugurated in October, Pillai said. |
| Apart from having reputed jewellers from across the country and abroad under one roof, the malls will also have a food court, executive lounge, children's play area, beauty salon, business centre, conference rooms, library and an exhibition centre. |
| Since the malls will have high value jewellery, the Souks will be equipped with advanced security systems like CCTV, infra-red movement detectors, access control, identification cards, X-ray machines and advanced fire detection systems, Pillai said. |
| He said after the RBI, these malls will be the single biggest place where large amounts of gold will be kept. |
| Gold Souk is promoted by the Delhi-based Aerens Group, which has been into the real estate business for the past three decades. |
| The Indian jewellery market is estimated to be worth $20 billion. |
| "The concept of Gold Souk was conceived with the objective of bringing a drastic change in the highly fragmented industry," the official said. |
| While there are over 3.50 lakh retailers across the country, only two per cent of India's jewellery market is organised with just four per cent of the jewellers having a space of over 500 square feet area. |
| "Each shop of Gold Souk will be of an area of around 1,500 square feet," Pillai said. |
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